It is very worrying to read the Minister for Energy stating in the Dáil here "We cannot, as a country, pick and choose which products we take based on their environmental profile.That would have to be decided at European level".
Article 194 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) specifically contradicts this assertion when it states that each EU Member State maintains its right to 'determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources, its choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply' (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...)
This is therefore a really fundamental issue to understand the limits of the State's room for manoeuvre in deciding its energy mix and I wonder what influence this wrong assertion by the Minister had on his decision yesterday in Brussels at the High-level meeting to decide on the approval or not of Gas Projects on the PCI list.
John McElligott (Safety Before LNG)
Posted on 5 Oct 2019 12:29 pm
It is very worrying to read the Minister for Energy stating in the Dáil here "We cannot, as a country, pick and choose which products we take based on their environmental profile.That would have to be decided at European level".
Article 194 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) specifically contradicts this assertion when it states that each EU Member State maintains its right to 'determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources, its choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply' (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...)
This is therefore a really fundamental issue to understand the limits of the State's room for manoeuvre in deciding its energy mix and I wonder what influence this wrong assertion by the Minister had on his decision yesterday in Brussels at the High-level meeting to decide on the approval or not of Gas Projects on the PCI list.